Veteran group Aslan ready to rock Monroe's

Aslan, who play Monroe’s Live on Friday, January 22, are undeniably one of Ireland’s hardest working bands having had a hectic Christmas which saw them play Vicar St on December 27, Killarney on December 28 and Carlow on December 31.

Billy McGuinness is the guitarist and harmonica player with Dublin based five-piece outfit and for him, the busy schedule is no big deal.“Aslan is a job so you get as much time off as everyone else,” he says. “Summer holidays and a week in January, that’s it.”

In these trying economic times, it’s heartening to hear about an Irish group who employ eight people full time.

“There are five in the band and three crew – a sound man, a truck driver and a roadie,” Billy explains. “It’s fairly compact. Especially when we go away, we need our own crew to set the gear up. Smokie does sound, and we’ve Adam and Steve. They’ve stuck with us for years, they’re like a part of the band. It’s one big happy family travelling around!”

Fronted by the charismatic Christy Dignam, Aslan have been on the go for over 27 years.

“We formed in 1982, believe it or not,” Billy recalls. “When we formed Aslan we said we’d give it a year. There’s something always spurring the band on, something always happens. The first example is when This Is got released [in 1986]. That got single of the year in Hot Press.”

Keeping a band together for such a long time is no mean feat, so their friendships must be fairly solid.

“The friendship thing has enabled us to stay together,” Billy declares. “We grew up in Finglas and Ballymun, and we were all friends before [the band]. What happens with most bands is if you just go for the best musician, when you have a row you find it very hard to make up. The band is a secondary thing to the friendships; when we have arguments – and we do have arguments [because] we spend more time on the road – then we do with our families, we say ‘let’s make up, shake hands and get on with it. We’ve a gig to do’.”

The importance of those friendships came to the fore in 1988 when Aslan decided to split. The extent of Christy Dignam’s heroin addiction meant they had to take a break. Are the other band members bothered by the media’s fixation on Dignam’s struggles?“I think that’s part of the story of Aslan,” says Billy.

“Christy’s been very honest about it; he had a drug problem. There was no point in trying to hide that. Aslan are very honest band. In Christy’s autobiography, he goes into the drug thing in a lot of detail. I think it’s part of what makes Christy who he is. Shane MacGowan had his story; Jimi Hendrix had his.

“We’ve done everything a band can do, including breaking up and getting back together again,” he adds. “The reason we broke up was if we hadn’t, we felt Christy was going to die. At the time we were offered lot of money by EMI to actually stay together. We said ‘listen, hang on a minute. This isn’t a business; this is our friend we’re talking about’.”

Dignam’s willingness to confront his addiction, and the return of the Dublin band, gives each Aslan gig a sense of triumph. Billy explains how Dignam eventually overcame his demons.

“Christy went in to the Rutland [Centre] and he ended up going over to Thailand,” he recalls. “He was in Cantra Bok [treatment centre] in Thailand for six to eight weeks,” he recalls. “I mean, Pete Doherty was over there and he lasted two days, y’know? It was a very strict regime and Christy came back brand new.

“It’s like anyone else with a problem, it’s one day at a time with him. But he’s singing brilliantly and it’s never interfered with his gigs. He’s never cancelled a gig in all the years I’ve known him.”

For more read page 26 of this week's Connacht Tribune.